Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Russians have Suffered ‘a Holocaust’ Too, Orthodox Nationalists Say

Paul
Goble

Staunton, November 18 – Russian
nationalists with close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate increasingly insist
that like the Jews, Russians have suffered and continue to suffer their very
own “holocaust,” a claim expanded upon in a new book entitled “The Scaffold” (“Plakha”)
and intriguing for three reasons.

First, Russian nationalists for more
than a century often promoted anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist ideas and would
have rejected any comparison of the suffering of their people to that of the
Jews. Now, that has changed, largely because of what Russians see as an
increasingly nationalist and militarily powerful Israel with whom they are
ready to identify.

Second, despite what many might
expect, Russian nationalists now use the term “holocaust” not to refer to the
millions of deaths believers and others suffered under Stalin – those deaths
are usually treated by the church as acts of individual heroism rather than
those who suffered being the victims of state policy.

And third, but rather to efforts first by
Austro-Hungary, then by the Nazis, and now, in their view, by the Ukrainians and
other post-Soviet nations to undermine Russian national identity and divide the
Russian nation, forcibly assimilating or otherwise wiping out the Russian
communities in these states.

In a review of a new book, “The Scaffold”
(“Plakha”), in today’s “NG-Religii, Lev Perchin quotes its editor, Aleksandr
Shchipkov as saying that “today it is already obvious that Russians in the 20th
century in the course of a short interval repeated some of the aspects of the
fate of the Jewish people” (ng.ru/ng_religii/2015-11-18/1_hollocaust.html).

Over the last several years, the “NG-Religii”
journalist continues, “the rhetorical parallel” between the Jewish Holocaust and
the fate of Russians has become a maintain of Russian Orthodox Church and
Russian commentary, with Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, a protégé of Patriarch
Kirill, using the term “our holocaust” to refer to the Pussy Riot
demonstrations.

But the Church hierarchy, Perchin
points out, is careful never to use this term to describe state-organized mass
murders in Soviet times, although “comparisons of the GULAG and German death
camps are [sometimes] made by the liberal minority of the church
intelligentsia.

“What then do the ideologues of
Russian conservatism consider ‘the scaffold’ of [the Russian] people? In the
center of this conception is the current Ukrainian crisis and its historical
roots,” in which “certain external forces over the course of the last century
have tried to destroy the self-consciousness of the Russian people and often
physically destroyed them if they resist.”

The new book, he writes, “sees the
roots of this Russophobic project in the policy of Austro-Hungary at the start
of the 20th century in the persecution of Orthodox Rusins in
Galicia.” Its actions were followed by the Nazis who wanted to “destroy
Russia.” And in both, “the main weapon for rooting out Russian self-consciousness
is the project of Ukrainian ‘separateness.’”

According to the “Plakha” writers,
“today we are observing the apotheosis of this Russophobic conspiracy in the
form of persecution of the Russian minority in Ukraine, the punitive operation
against the Russian republics of Novorossiya, and so on. Such in brief,”
Perchin continues, “is the dark picture” they offer.

This “historical-political
construction” enjoys wide resonance among Russian conservatives and reflects
the position of the Moscow Patriarchate “for which the problem of preserving
the church’s jurisdiction in the entire post-Soviet space and Russian national
interest are presented as an indivisible ideological unity.”

According to Patriarch Kirill, “the
Russian church like no other organization ‘suffers from the actions of extreme
nationalist forces including those who devote their negative energy to the
fratricidal conflict in Ukraine.’ Where the patriarch speaks of ‘extreme
nationalism,’ a whole chorus of voices openly call the forces which have won in
Ukraine ‘Nazi.’”

“We will not evaluate the historical
correctness of the comparison of ‘the Ukrainian challenge’ to Russia [these
authors offer] with the genocide of Jews in Europe,” Perchin says, except to
note that the latter involved actual murders while the former has only involved
challenges to identity and church administration.

But given the anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism of many Russian Orthodox and Russian nationalist writers in the
past, including most recently St. Petersburg Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev) who
often suggested that “Zionists’” were “the main enemies of the Russian people,”
the new willingness of such writers to link Russian and Jewish fates is
interesting.

Perchin suggests there are three
reasons for this rhetorical shift.First, these groups are seeking “political respectability, which excludes
open anti-Semitism.” Second, ever more Russians now view Israel as a leader of
conservative values and even a model for using religion to build a traditional
state.

And third, for such people, Perchin
argues, “Israel displays power which cannot but elicit the sympathy of Russian
great power advocates and justifies it by the suffering of European Jews, recalling
them in the same sense which the Russian Orthodox Church recalls the persecutions
of its past and present believers.”